Mine is Quantum Leap. It ran from the late '80s and early '90s, and it was about Dr. Sam Beckett, who 'leaped' into different peoples' lives to fix mistakes in their own time. He was assisted throughout his missions by his friend Al Calavicci, who was also a hologram that only Sam could see and hear.

I've always had an interest in time travel as a concept, and this show handled it quite well, I feel. The writers of QL also stuck to a rule that Sam could only leap within his own lifetime (from the early '50s to roughly the early '80s). This was broken in a few episodes, but for the most part it was consistently followed throughout its 5 seasons.

Well, enough about my favourite show. What's your favourite show that is over 20 years old? Why do you like it? What's your favourite episode?

It's funny. There's a big difference between what I want to say vs. what it actually is.

I want to say Rat Patrol because it's a bunch of dudes driving around the Southern California desert pretending to fight Nazis. But the shows are actually boring.

I want to say Space: Above and Beyond because it was the most promising hard sci fi series ever to come out and it just died from lack of interest. But since it's unresolved it's unrewarding.

I want to say Upstairs, Downstairs because it's a masterful exploration of class and culture but it's also a long haul and I don't need to see it again.

I want to say Star Trek because it's an excellent and important exploration of issues from an era where that wasn't really done on television but it's also often campy and trite.

I want to say The Wire but it's only sixteen years old.

I don't want to say Twilight Zone but the answer is Twilight Zone.

Twilight Zone is one of the most thoughtful things ever aired on American television. It's golden-age sci fi from golden-age sci fi writers, performed on a shoestring budget for people who were paying attention. It's cheap, it's quick, it's poignant as hell and it's haunting. Twilight Zone is the kind of show that would stage Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Twilight Zone is the kind of show that would give Richard Matheson sixteen episodes. Twilight Zone is such a pop cultural icon that you can go meta three deep on the fucking thing and have the audience laugh along:

I mean, my wife wanted to watch Fringe. I'd read the pilot and knew it was garbage but whatever. So we watched Fringe. Then to prove a point we watched the pilot of X-Files, which had more interest in the fucking pre-title sequence than all of Fringe. Then to really hate ourselves we watched the pilot of Twilight Zone, which was literally a dude wandering around the Warner lot on a Sunday when nobody was there.

And Rod Serling made the Warner lot on a Sunday more interesting than Kurtzman, Orci and Jj Abrams could do with $2m an episode.

Watch some Outer Limits. They'll make you wish you were watching Twilight Zone. They didn't all suck but on balance they weren't great.

Friend of mine is a raging Rod Serling fan. Has listened to the dictaphone tapes at USC, shit like that. Written two biopics about Rod Serling. He made Jim Aubrey the villain of one - the executive who cancelled Twilight Zone so CBS could show Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island. You know, shit television. I made the point that shit television or not, CBS dominated the ratings because fuckin'A, we like to pretend our country has only been full of ignorant hicks recently but go ahead and explain Hee Haw.

Netflix is making more movies than all the movie studios combined. And that doesn't even get into TV. It's all pretty much mid-90s USA Network stuff (if you've decided Stranger Things is a masterpiece you have embraced the "soft tyranny of low expectations") but the fact of the matter is, the only thing that needs realtime eyeballs are sporting events and competition variety.

We were talking CBS. This year, CBS premiered "Young Sheldon" and "SWAT" on broadcast. Online, they premiered "Star Trek: Discovery". You wanna watch "Young Sheldon?" Bow to the one-eyed god. You wanna watch "Star Trek: Discovery?" Any screen you want, any time you want, just pay CBS $6 a month for the privilege.

The only shows anybody talks about anymore are behind a paywall. Really, Comcast is just another streaming service with a really fuckin' expensive dongle in front of it. Broadcast television is for the dead-enders and if you need to get home to catch your shows they're either American Idol or you're already dead to advertisers.

Max Headroom. Totally badass cyberpunk adventure series. It‘s so campy and I love it, although to be honest I like Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future (the original film) more than any episode of the TV series.

We were not allowed to have a TV in the house until I was in high school. We got a TV in the house just about the time that my mom went back to work after raising us (there is a shocker). I just never had an interest. Why watch TV when I could go outside, or read, or hang out with the other weird kids from school? But looking at the answers here, I've seen Twilight Zone, both series and the movie. I've watched Babylon 5. Hell we went to a bar and watched it when it first aired. I think I watched some of Star Trek: TNG and did not really like it. Hard to say as there is so damn much Star Trek in nerd circles I've probably absorbed the whole series but maybe watched 3-4 episodes, tops (TNG is 30 years old now). Animaniacs, I watched on accident and got hooked. Freakazoid is exactly 20 years old and I have bootleg tapes and the DVD's.

The problem I have with TV and movies is that video games have corrupted me. I just cannot sit there passively and absorb. I have to do something to interact, move the camera, do SOMETHING. A 90 minute movie is about all I can take. Watching a series, 22 hours a season, I'd have to have it on in the background and at that point I'd rather do podcasts while gaming.

If I was going to force myself to watch something it would probably be Deep Space 9. I'm told it is good, and it was the competition to Babylon 5, which I liked (granted the people I watched it with made it better). I don't have a streaming service other than my untouched Amazon Prime Video (seriously they flood me with movie suggestions daily now reminding me that I have never watched anything).

I just have too much going on right now to justify the time sink that I could rather spend reading with some Baroque era Classical on in the background.

I think the cruelest part about this question is that it's hard to whittle it down to one. So have a mess of them.

Cartoons

Samurai Jack isn't twenty years old yet, but when it will be, it'll take top place. In the meantime, at a very close second, is Batman: The Animated Series. Both of them are very well constructed, from the animation and stylization, to the story craft. They're well thought out, well paced, engaging, and often relatively creative. Both series have many episodes that stand out in my memory as amazing and I'd be hard pressed to think of an episode I didn't enjoy.

Sitcoms

MASH and The Andy Griffith Show both stand out to me as being television sitcoms that explore a very wide spectrum of morals and philosophies, and while they don't always do so with depth, there's always something that can be taken away from them. The Dick Van Dyke Show and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show are both just a whole mess of fun. Everyone very much seems to enjoy what they're creating together and the energy and enthusiasm can be felt in almost every scene.

Nova. There is literally zero, zero chances that you can pick any episode of Nova, watch the whole thing, and then look at me with a straight face and say you've gotten nothing out of it. This series amazes and inspires, it thrills and fascinates, it deepens and enriches. It's good, good television.

I haven't seen the new seasons, as I don't have cable anymore, but I'm pretty certain it's much more adult oriented than the original series. I'm not saying it's better or worse, cause I don't know, but I'm under the impression it's a very different kind of cartoon now.

I've never seen F Troop. I honestly didn't know it existed until five minutes ago.

rd95 nailed it re: assumptions for the latest and final season of Samurai Jack.

It seemed more a tying of loose ends with many cameo's to stand-out episodes in prior seasons. Aside from the fan-service dulling the plot (to me), it's clear the team still could whip up refreshing, clever action sequences. Compounded with how Jack's psyche negotiates with seeing what he's seen up to this point, I'd say it's worth the watch, but not much outstanding praise.

I agree about Get Smart. Amazing show, and it still gets laughs to this day.

Personally, under Cartoons, I'd also put Beavis and Butt-Head. It's dumb and crude, but it is a fantastic satire of teenage life, and it is just a hilarious show in general.

I agree, there's so many great shows out there to whittle it down to a single show. I put Quantum Leap there because that's the one I've been watching recently. There are many more that I regard as classics.

I knew a family that owned like half of Roslyn, and I worked in a bar owned by John Corbett (my first introduction was trying to kick him out of the green room). It's funny - Northern X kind of defined my early 20s but I don't think I've ever watched more than half an episode.

She was my most-recent ex-girlfriend's ex-best-friend, she was a dead ringer for Shannon Elizabeth, and she'd grown really, really close over email as I helped her get over ex-husband #3.

I had just started dating my wife about a week previously or things might have gone very differently. It's entirely possible she fucked up my recording in a passive-aggressive sort of way. I mean, I was the first person she asked her dad to add to his prison visitation list.

I own all the seasons... COME AT ME BRO (if you'd like to borrow them)

how many VHS tapes

a lot... and I was enough of a nerd to want "high quality" recordings, so I was doing the "SP" setting so I could only fit two hours (two episodes) per tape. It was obscene. I think I got through about three seasons like that - and switched to LP which gave me four per tape? And then I couldn't afford cable for a while.... and the streak was broken... and then DVDs came out... and then I had kids... and then I was like "hell if I'm ever moving this box again" and then I got cable again... and then I filled up my DVR with them... and then I figured out that I could export the contents of my DVR to my Mac (via the handy firewire port on the back)... which I could import using some janky old Mac utility I dug out of some obscure forum online.... and then I started to convert those files into something I could burn to DVD... and then the Northern Exposure series was released on DVD and I bought the special collector edition of season 1 and 2 (complete with little down parkas) for $25 per season... and then a year later seasons 3,4,5,6 were in a multipack in a Target discount bin for I shit you not $10.

You and me both. The only time I ever purchase digital media is if it's the only option (or if it's a book in the public domain that I know I'll pretty much never find scouring bookstores high and low). There is something really special about looking at your shelves and seeing your collection. Even more so, there's something special about taking something off your shelf and giving it to a friend.